would actually be higher on average than those charged by private companies participating in the new health insurances exchanges. At least, that is the surprising conclusion of the Congressional Budget Office, which Politco’s Carrie Budoff Brown found in its assessment of the new House bill.:
Congress
Medicaid: The OTHER Public Option
As I noted earlier, the real surprise in the House health care bill wasn’t the public plan–we had pretty much known for days that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi didn’t have the votes to pass her preferred version, the so-called “robust” public plan, which would have closely tied its reimbursements to health care providers to Medicare’s …
4 for 2010?
House Republicans are starting to pull together an agenda for 2010. It’s not as sweeping as the Contract with America, or, even, Six for 06. But if you’re a small businessman with a commercial real estate problem or a company wondering how you’re going to pay for mounting unemployment insurance costs — than this plan’s for you. Once, …
House Health Bill
is here, all 1,990 pages of it. I’m still trying to figure it out. But from the early details I’ve seen, it strikes me that the real news here is not the public option, but rather, the decision to expand Medicaid eligibility all the way up to 150% of poverty. That’s a significant increase from earlier versions, which went to 133%. Both …
Lieberman To Filibuster The Public Option.
The Public Option: Five Reasons Harry Reid Went For It
Less than two weeks ago, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s aides and colleagues were saying they were all but certain he would bring health care legislation to the Senate floor without a public option. Yesterday, as everyone who follows this issue now knows, he did the opposite. It’s a big gamble. While Reid will likely be able to hold …
UPDATE: Public Option Smoke Signals
The weekend only added to the confusion. Jonathan Cohn attempts to sort it out for us.
UPDATE: Harry Reid is holding a news conference shortly after 3 p.m. Eastern, apparently to inform us that he will take a public option to the Senate floor.
UPDATE: Nonsense
Someone needs to explain to a few conservative bloggers what satire looks like. Your first clue might be when it mentions dates that are in the future.
HCAN Protests AHIP
A dispatch from TIME’s Sophia Yan:
“Congress, We Are Watching You!” was scrawled across handmade signs, bobbing above the heads of the few hundred rallied by Health Care for America Now to show support for a public option. “We need a public option, not a stock option,” shouted one woman. Some came out to support family
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Health Care: Public Option Smoke Signals
We are clearly at a very weird phase of this process, as David Kurtz explains here.
I’m not going to pretend I’ve got anything that resembles clarity, but I’m being told by a normally trustworthy source that at last night’s White House meeting, the President referred to the triggered public option as one of the ideas on the table …
Lieberman Takes on Obama’s Czars
There aren’t many Democrats that would be willing to take on their own White House on the sensitive topic of czars – especially since the mere mention of the word by virtually any elected official sends Fox News in paroxysms. Russ Feingold weighed in a couple of weeks ago. And today at 2:30pm, Senate Homeland Security and Government …
Health Reform: How The Drug Companies Won A Big One
$609,000 a day. That’s how much the drug and biotech companies have been spending to influence Congress in the health reform debate, more than any other industry. So it’s no surprise that they have been extraordinarily successful.
In the upcoming issue of dead-tree TIME, Michael Scherer and I look behind the scenes at the fight over …
Docs Fix DOA
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid just told reporters that he will not be moving Senator Debbie Stabenow’s 10-year, $247 billion freeze on doctors’ Medicare payments. He said he thought he had the votes – and was promised Republican 27 votes from the AMA – but has since realized he doesn’t. “I don’t bring anything to the …